You're in space alone, and you're facing the actual danger by yourself. What did you want to get at about that dynamic? But the book pivots sort of back and forth between Houston and the teams in space or Russia and the teams in space. And one of the ways this really works is because the action is in space, and the protagonists are very far away from help at home. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, you talk about the sort of ancillary purpose of this book - not just being a cracking good yarn but also taking you into what it is like to be an astronaut and what people talk about. And the amazing fact that they took one of those bomber's tail guns and mounted it on their secret space station - most people don't know about that, so it was fun to get all the details and get them right and make that an intrinsic part of the plot of "The Apollo Murders." And sticking out the back of those Soviet bombers was a great big tail gun. HADFIELD: Yeah, I was a fighter pilot during the Cold War, and I used to intercept Soviet bombers that were in North American airspace with a fully armed F-18. I mean, you mentioned the machine gun, and that is - I don't want to give too much away, but it's a very important plot point up in space where you basically imagine what it would be like to have a gunfight between two different space capsules. And then going on to the Moon, where there was a Soviet rover called Lunokhod driving around, which also in real life mysteriously malfunctioned in the spring of '73 - and that works into my plot of the American astronauts and cosmonauts in the Soviet space program, American space program, and then coming back down to the big, exciting final climax at splashdown just north of Hawaii. And part of the mission was to go up and get a better understanding of that secret space station Almaz and maybe do something dubious there and then to continue on to the Moon because in reality, the Almaz space station mysteriously malfunctioned in the spring of '73 and deorbited. And part of the reason that the military wanted to do it was at the time, the Soviets had a secret spy space station for real called Almaz that for real had a machine gun mounted on the outside of it. Air Force, to get enough money and used the real military astronauts to be the crew of Apollo 18. So the plot is he went to the Air Force, the U.S. And there were supposed to be Apollo 18 and Apollo 19, but Nixon canceled them for financial reasons. But the Apollo missions, of course, went to the Moon. HADFIELD: Oh, yeah, there are a lot of things going on. So talk me through the plot a little bit - about what the ostensible mission of the space flight is but what the secret mission is because there's two things going on here. His new novel is called "The Apollo Murders." It follows a fictional Apollo Mission 18 during the space race and the Cold War in the early 1970s. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Unlike Major Tom, he made it back to Earth and began writing bestselling books about the final frontier. HADFIELD: (Singing) This is ground control to Major Tom. ISS Commander Chris Hadfield was orbiting the Earth at thousands of miles an hour as he sang David Bowie's "Space Oddity" in 2015. CHRIS HADFIELD: (Singing) Ground control to Major Tom.
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